The other day I was flitting around on the internet, browsing through some sites trying to get ideas on how to be more organized and productive. I suffer from the same problem that many people have these days, too much to do and too little time to do it in. I reasoned, I can’t change how much stuff I have to do, and I can’t change the amount of hours in a day, so I had better figure out how to use my time more wisely to get more done.

I found a great site full of tons of good stuff. Organizing tips. Cleaning tips. Motivational pep talks. Everything I was looking for, all rolled up into one great site. It was a site where you have to join, but it was free. You just put in some info, click some boxes, and off you go on your journey to perfection.

One of the boxes I clicked offered me the chance to receive email updates from the site. I checked “yes”, excited to get daily updates to keep me motivated, focused and moving in the right direction.

That was a week ago. In the first 6 days, I received 76, yep SEVENTY-SIX!!! emails from this site. Every single email offering some valuable tip for helping to organize my life. Here’s the thing, from what I can tell, they are all good tips.

Get fit and healthy by Memorial Day!

Do It Now! Can keep your family safe!

Holiday clean-up! Missions 1 – 10 (all separate emails)

Finding a happy person inside me!

Food for thought – develop the dinner habit!

Homework help for the kiddos!

And that’s just 6 of the 76 emails! Excuse me helpful website, but all I want to do now is run and hide and stick my head in the sand. I don’t even have time to READ your 76 emails, never name implement them into my unorganized and time crunched life. Could you possibly overwhelm me any more?

Then one of the emails in particular caught my eye:

Beginner Baby Steps: You can do anything for 15 minutes!

That’s me. I’m a beginner who is in dire need of baby steps. I can do 15 minutes!

Here’s a snippet of the email,

“Today we are going to learn the power of just 15 minutes. You can do anything for 15 minutes. This is all about getting started and giving ourselves permission to stop when the timer goes off… The timer helps to keep us focused on what we are doing.

Now set your timer for 15 minutes and go gather up all the trash you can find to throw away and put it in the garbage can outside. Then set your timer for another 15 minutes and sit down and put your feet up and read a favorite magazine till the timer goes off.”

So I gave it a try. I decided to tackle an area of the house that is usually near the bottom of my “To do” list: the entryway and stair railing. It’s a catch-all spot in my house.

The railing is home on this particular day to jackets, scarves, backpacks, a Walmart bag,Victoria Secret sweats hanging out to dry. Not a pretty sight.

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Let’s play “Where’s Waldo” with the contents of the entryway itself. Can you spot these items? football, tanning lotion, bottom half of sled, camo backpack, hockey stick, box of screws, and an explosion of shoes.

I wish I could tell you this was an abnormal day, like maybe a pack of wild children on school field trip mistook my home for their school’s coatroom and threw their junk willy nilly throughout the place. But alas, this is the typical scene in my entryway.

I set my timer for 15 minutes and set out to tackle the clutter. It is amazing what can be done in a mere 15 minutes!

I even got finished with 3 minutes to spare. And then as a reward I did just as the email instructed. I set the timer for 15 more minutes, grabbed an ice cold diet coke and my book club book for this month (The Alliance) and enjoyed the peace and quiet. It is as good thing I set the timer, though. The old me wouldn’t have budged from that comfy reading spot for at least an hour. The new and improved me, however, hopped right up, headed over to the computer and wrote up this escapade for you.